Authors: Ralph McInerny

Tags: #Mystery

Sham Rock (15 page)

BOOK: Sham Rock

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WHO WAS IT THAT SAID THINGS HAPPEN the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce? Mame might have asked Dave, he knew such things, but that was out. Besides, her failure to lure Dave away from Beth in the dear long ago could hardly count as tragedy, and it was defeat she was intent on avoiding now, not farce. For farcical she had Wilfrid confronting Dave in his office, casting himself as the wronged husband! Only it wasn't funny. Mame was uneasily aware that any little thing could send Dave out of her life forever.

“What in God's name did you have in mind, Will?”

She had found him at the Connecticut place, raking leaves from under shrubs and hedges. Baggy suntans, a shapeless sweatshirt, and those gunboat-sized XXL tennies could not turn Wilfrid into a son of the soil. He looked like what he was, a Manhattan lawyer trying out for the Man with a Hoe. He tipped back the bill of his cap and rubbed the tip of his nose, dumbfounded.

“You know what I'm talking about.”

“Help me.”

“Offering to open an account with Dave Williams.”

“He wouldn't do it.”

“Because he understood what you meant by it.”

“Mame, I love youâ”

“Oh, shut up.”

She huffed down the path to her hideaway. Inside, she tossed her tote bag on a couch, circled her desk, and sat. Hands flat on the desk, eyes closed, she resolved that Dave's quoting Father Carmody would not be the trump card. How could he ignore Monsignor Sparrow's opinion? Mame was tired of waiting. She picked up the phone.

Dave called to ask her what the hell she was talking to his son about. He was angry. Mame liked that. Jay seemed another way to box Dave in. All's fair in adultery and war, but Mame wanted more. So did Dave, if he would only admit it. Mame was not at all impressed by his claim of undying devotion to his dead wife.

“You're as bad as Larry Briggs, Mame.” There was something like contempt in his voice.

Mame and Philippa Briggs had lunched and talked about Larry. Even Philippa thought he had gone round the bend.

“Didn't Dave return his money, Flip?”

“Yes, and he sank it all into municipal bonds.”

“So you're all right.”

“All Larry talks about is what we would have had if Dave hadn't persuaded him to sell out. Mame, he's obsessed.”

“Why don't you take a trip?”

“He has!”

“Alone.”

Philippa pushed her glass away and hunched forward. “Believe me, I am enjoying a little peace and quiet.”

“Where did he go?”

“He just took off.” She sat back. “Did you know that you can take a steamboat on the Mississippi?”

“Is that what Larry is doing?”

“He wasn't sure what he was going to do. It was just one idea.”

“Will isn't that wacko.”

“What do you mean?

“Why does everyone hate Dave Williams?”

“Do you?”

Mame smiled. “Only every other day.”

Mame might have told Dave about that luncheon conversation, but she didn't want to talk about Larry Briggs. She had half a mind to tell Dave that she was going out to see Father Carmody, but there was no need to play that card before she learned if it would win a trick. She hadn't a clue what the priest might say. In any case, her absence would go unnoticed by Dave when he finally decided to go to Kentucky and thank Pat Pelligrino for the money he had left him.

THE NEWS FROM UP NORTH THREW Casey off his writing schedule for several days, off the project he was on, that is. He went back to the idea for a novel that would incorporate the loss and reappearance of Timothy Quinn, Brother Joachim's odd bequest to David Williams, and Beth Hanrahan up there in Minneapolis ladling out soup to the scruffy images of God who showed up at Our Lady of the Road.

“How will you fit in?” Peaches asked. She was ripe as a melon now, her due date just weeks away.

“Me? I'm the author.”

“I meant back then.”

“There were only three persons in the trinity, Peaches.”

“Plus one Virgin Mary.”

“Beth? Oh, she was something in those days. She could have become an actress. She already was one.”

“And you were just on the edge of it all?”

“Mame and I. That's how we ended up together.”

“I don't want to hear it.”

“Peaches, we were all different then.”

Those long-ago events had been like the point in a novel toward which everything converges; the point is reached, and the resulting explosion provides the denouement, scattering them all. Not that he would put it like that to Peaches. He hated blathering about the art
of writing. People write a novel or two and suddenly they're experts about the craft of fiction. Meaning they can tell you how they themselves did it, if that. Do magicians go around explaining their tricks? He shouldn't have said that about Mame.

Dave Williams's decision to take his condo off the market hadn't exactly blighted Peaches's day. She had tons of listings, showings every day, but not many deals were closed. Buyers were always putting off decisions, hoping prices would keep dropping, and owners were skittish. Almost none of them wanted to sell. Selling represented defeat, the admission that affluence had turned into its opposite. Dave was lucky to have been bailed out by Pat Pelligrino.

Dave had always been lucky. Despite the stiff competition, he had ended up with Beth, something Casey found out about quite by accident. How many guys would have had the guts to ask for the use of a room? Back then, they were all pretty decent. Read about campuses now, and they sound like nonstop Roman orgies. Overstated, no doubt, but the whole attitude toward sex had changed, and for the worst. No wonder people turned to Jane Austen for relief. That was the attraction of Westerns for Casey. Strong macho heroes and women who were the kind of women their mothers had been. You want the other kind, go downtown to the saloon. Of course it was a formula, as old as fiction. A woman attracts a man; obstacles arise and have to be confronted one by one. The efforts bring about a series of failures, everything looks bleak, and then our hero comes plausibly through against great odds, he folds the woman in his arms, and the sun sinks slowly in the west. You couldn't write such stories if you didn't believe in them. Peaches's condition brought back another memory.

How many times had Dave asked to use his room before it just
stopped? Something had happened. In retrospect, he could imagine that he had suspected something, that he had noticed a change in Beth. Pregnant? My God. What had happened to the baby, if there had been one? It would have been unthinkable for Beth to have an abortion.

“What did you mean, you and Mame ended up together?”

“I thought you didn't want to know.”

“Maybe you want to get it off your chest.”

“Have you ever thought of writing fiction?”

He took her on his lap, not as easy an operation now, and pressed her cheek to his. It was better than a Western.

Mame. The last time she was down she had stopped by, asking for Peaches, but she must have known she would be at the office or on the job, showing places to prospective buyers. Mame strolled around his work area, fluttering pages, peering at the computer screen, then went to the shelf where his books were arrayed and began counting them.

“Don't.”

“How many are there?”

“That's most of them.”

“But not all?”

“When a paperback's shelf life is over, you don't have much chance of finding a copy.”

Once, against his rules, he had spoken to a meeting of used book dealers and had begun by announcing that it had always been his ambition to write used books. They had loved it. So had he. It was true, too. All he really wanted was readers, but you never know your readers. It was a weird life.

“You are amazing, Casey,” Mame said.

“I've forgotten how to blush modestly.”

“Dave said to me that sometimes he thought he was the only one of us who ended up living a normal life. He forgot about you.”

“You call this normal?”

“I call it wonderful.”

The thing about Mame, she never let you forget that she was a woman and you were a man. The outfit she wore involved nine colors at least, and she came on like a rainbow. It had the kind of skirt that swirled every chance it got. The big plastic belt emphasized Mame's slenderness. Or maybe it was the contrast with Peaches.

“All this and Peaches, too,” Mame said.

“Maybe I should start buying lottery tickets.”

“Dave and I are not going to marry.” Just like that, out of the blue. Casey just stared. “Did you know Bridget?”

“A little. Not really.”

“He's still in love with her.”

“Tough for you?”

“Casey, have you ever really tried to recall those years when we were all on campus? I mean really bring it all back. It wasn't very flattering to have the three of them nuts about Beth.”

“You had me.”

She smiled. “Did I?”

“So you and Dave aren't going to get married.”

“Who told you that?”

“You did.”

She thought. “That's right, I did. It just slipped out.”

He had little doubt that it was an announcement of something else. Peaches had said that Mame was still nuts about Dave, talked about nothing else. For crying out loud, she had wanted to buy his
condo so he wouldn't lose it. It sounded like something in the kind of novel he no longer cared to write.

“A funny thing. Dave says that when Beth got back to Minneapolis, Timothy was no longer there. Vamoosed.”

“I suppose he got used to being lost.”

It was several days later that Tim showed up. Bearded, open road, open sky, king of the road. Casey didn't recognize him at first and figured he had come for a handout.

“I recognize you,” the man said.

Casey peered at him through the screen. My God. “Tim?”

Of course he asked him in. Casey offered to make lunch.

“Anything but soup.”

Tim told him about taking off from Minneapolis before Beth got back from Notre Dame.

“Just took off?”

“It's my signature move.”

Casey thought about that. “How was the army?”

“You're kidding.”

“I thought you were antiwar.”

“What's that got to do with being a GI?”

There they were, talking away as if two decades hadn't intervened, Casey not yet the fiction machine and Tim not yet the mystery man whose signature move was just to take off.

“Where are you going?”

“I've been. Do you know how long a drive it is from Minneapolis?”

Casey groaned in sympathy. Beth had an old car, a gift, but still in good shape. Actually the thought of getting behind the wheel and
setting off for nowhere in particular suddenly had an enormous appeal. Let the computer cool off, recharge the old batteries. Nonsense, of course. Tim didn't have a Peaches to anchor him.

“You've been working with Beth?”

“It's not work.”

“How is she?”

“The same and different. Like everybody else.” Tim spoke in almost dreamy tones.

“Still nuts about her?”

No need to answer. Tim just looked around Casey's workroom. “You ever see Dave Williams?”

“Once in a while.”

“You know he got Beth pregnant.”

“Come on.”

“It's true. She lost the baby. I stopped at Gethsemani on the way down to see Pat. We talked of little else.”

“Geez.”

“I could have killed him. Pat felt the same way.” A pause. “Pat got over it.”

Casey did not pursue the implications of that.

“Beth's painting his picture.”

Tim made it sound like a crime. Dave called her up after who knows how many years and the first thing she did was get out photographs and set up her easel.

“She paints?”

“She still loves him.”

“No harm in that. Have they gotten together?”

“No!”

“Dave and Mame seem to be going together.”

“Isn't he married?”

“A widower. His boy is a student at Notre Dame.”

“How old are your kids?”

“There's only one. Minus one month old.” He had to explain it. “How did you get here, Tim?”

“Drove. I'll stop in Kentucky to see Brother Joachim again on the way back.”

“I've always wanted to do that.”

“They will welcome you like Christ himself. It's in their rule.”